Review of Farewell Amor, directed by Ekwa Msangi

For those of you who read my blog on a daily basis, you’re probably overly aware of the fact I had a super awesome trip to Malaysia in January 2024. For those of you just reaching this site for the first time, though, welcome! I went to Malaysia in January 2024 for three weeks, and had the time of my life visiting family on the other side of the world.

That said, one of my greatest domestic loves of travel happens to be watching movies whenever I’m jet lagged early in the morning. I also enjoy seeing what my American streaming platforms have to offer when I’m abroad, and during this trip I had such a blast seeing what was on my MUBI platform.

MUBI is something I open up every so often when it comes to being back home in the States, but when I was in Malaysia, it was my go-to platform. They had such a great selection of movies! It was truly catered to my taste, so I crammed in all the goodies that aren’t at home.

Farewell Amor is one of them. I was so intrigued by the premise of this film that when I saw it available on the MUBI platform, I watched it immediately. And man, what a movie this was!

Let’s get into the review.

An Angolan family reunites in New York City, but not to the tune they expected.

This is a film set in New York City, but its origins are on the other side of the Atlantic. Esther and Sylvia fly into New York for the first time to reunite with Walter, Esther’s husband and Sylvia’s father. He left Angola years ago to make money and search for a new life as a cab driver, providing for his family while abroad.

Now, he’s brought his daughter and wife to the States to live with him. They haven’t seen each other in 17 years, and this stiff awkwardness shows when they meet for the first time.

This awkwardness is going to linger for a while, especially as Walter has found a new woman, and Esther has become very religious in the mean time.

They don’t really know how to interact with each other, and Walter is fresh from a breakup with his girlfriend—Esther doesn’t know about this girl yet, though. They return to a one bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, where they make a makeshift bedroom for Sylvia, who is about to attend school here in New York.

Sylvia struggles at first with school, but befriends a nice boy who helps unlock her hidden talent for dance. She’s self conscious of herself and her accent, and when she arrives at the school, she’s an immediate outsider.

As she interacts with this new boy, she slowly opens up with dance, although her mother gets angry when she brings her new friend into her home. Esther also does not like the fact her daughter is pursuing dance, but it’s one of the few things keeping Sylvia together with this move.

At the same time, Esther struggles, too. She’s trying to find the remnants of her faith in this new country, and doesn’t recognize the man who is her husband. She befriends their neighbor, who goes grocery shopping with her and listens to Esther’s quiet woes when needed.

Walter and Esther’s relationship also isn’t the greatest. In one pivotal scene, Esther and Walter begin having sex, but then she realizes that her husband might not really be in love with her anymore. They’re two completely different at this point, and the distance can’t be fixed this easily and quickly.

For the longest time, I was staring at the girl who played Sylvia, trying to figure out where I had seen her before. Then, when I saw her Wikipedia page, I remembered I had seen her in Till. There’s this one scene in that movie where she shines will talking to Mamie, and that’s how I remembered Jayme Lawson overall. She had quite a year in 2022!

Overall Thoughts

I really enjoyed this film! I thought there was a lot to take away from it, and it had quite a bit of heart involved.

That said, I did think it was a little short. I wanted more from the movie in the end, especially because we were dealing with multiple narratives within the family at once. If it were a bit longer, perhaps I would have liked it a lot more than I did.

Regardless, this is a movie to watch. I love seeing immigrant stories, especially in New York, depicted on the screen. That’s one of my favorite parts of the city—seeing how diverse it is.

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